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Lawmaker pushes for online-only university

No classrooms, no dorms, no football stadium, no parking lots. Could an online-only university work in Florida?

Rep. Will Weatherford, the Florida’s House speaker-designate, thinks so.

Thursday, he asked state university system leaders to look into the possibility.

“Ladies and gentlemen, this is the fastest-growing part of our education system,” Weatherford, R-Wesley Chapel, told the Florida Board of Governors at a meeting in Tallahassee. He pointed to a growing number of students who take online classes as evidence that the prospect already has support.

Fifty percent of the state’s 300,000-plus students took a course online last year, Weatherford said. And that was just the most recent count he could find. Certainly, he said, those numbers have gone up.

“They want this flexibility,” he said. “I think there’s a way for the state of Florida to give this to them.”

Weatherford stressed that his idea was a suggestion, and that he did not intend to take any immediate action on it. But he thought it could be a viable option for the state’s 13th university.

Florida now has 11 public institutions, and the Board of Governors has committed to making the University of South Florida Polytechnic its 12th.

“I would like to just plant that seed,” Weatherford said.

It seems to have taken root. Board of Governors chairman Dean Colson committed to responding to Weatherford’s request. It echoes the board’s recent efforts to increase the university system’s distance-learning offerings. And State University System Chancellor Frank Brogan said the idea would “work beautifully” with the board’s plans to consolidate universities’ library and Web services.

Board member Ann Duncan, who chairs the board’s Academic and Student Affairs committee, asked Weatherford whether he had an existing model in mind.

Not really, he said. Maybe something like the all-online Western Governors University, which began in Utah, but bigger and broader, Weatherford said. Perhaps the University of Florida could head it up. Maybe it would be up to the private sector, or maybe a public-private partnership, he said.

Weatherford reminded the board of the popular Florida Virtual online program for K-12 students. It is the largest state-funded program of its kind in the nation, but its results are tough to track, a recent Tampa Bay Times report found.